104: Apple’s iLaptop, Near-Field Focus, and Becoming a HomeKit WiZ

Welcome to In the News for June the 30th, the last day of June, where it's like midway through 2023.

My name is Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD. So Brett, if today's the last day of June, tomorrow would be what, the first day of July? Is that what I'm hearing?

Yes.

Yes, indeed.

Is that what I'm hearing?

If it's the first day of July,

It is.

Oh my goodness.

does that mean that we should be putting on our birthday party hats?

You little stinker.

Look at my little things here,

because I think that there's a birthday boy tomorrow morning.

You stinker.

Should I just wear this birthday hat?

I didn't even know that you knew.

(laughing)

This looks like a real birthday hat,

I was gonna go with you.

but I actually created this as a 3D volume,

an Apple Vision Pro developer kit.

No, this is not. This is actually a real hat.

I was gonna go with you on that, Jeff.

I don't think I look silly at all.

I really was.

(laughing)

Anyone listening to the audio podcast needs to jump on

That's beautiful.

YouTube to see this beautiful hat.

We'll keep it on for a little bit until it annoys me.

That is beautiful.

You stinker.

Happy birthday a day early.

I didn't know that you knew.

Thank you, my friend.

Indeed. [LAUGHTER]

Thank you.

It's good.

Well, you've got some good stuff to cover.

In fact, how about Apple's new product?

We hadn't heard too much about the iLaptop.

All right, that's, you're going Vision Pro,

This is coming off. This is now annoying me.

I'm going to the, yeah, please, that's great.

[laughs] Yeah.

So this was an excellent story, number one,

because the number one question probably

that I think I get when I go around the country

talking about the iPad, Jeff, for years,

and you've encountered this too,

is for some reason, everybody always says,

"Hey, the iPad, this looks great.

can it replace my laptop?

And for several years there, at least initially,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

the answer was, well, not really.

Over the last few years, it's gotten much closer.

And I thought this was an excellent article.

In fact, this is great Fernando.

I used to follow him on his YouTube channel.

Yeah, I mean, you need to define the word replace because are we saying you'll

Great to see that he's in nine to five Mac now,

but he's went through several features on iPadOS 17

that really does even bring,

you know, make that gap much smaller.

The iPad Pro can pretty much today,

I think replace your laptop.

And that's great.

That's true, that's true.

never need to touch a computer again,

you'll just need your iPad,

Right.

for a few folks perhaps.

But for most people, no.

Certainly for professional users like

the law practice that I have, no.

Right, right.

I mean, you need to have a computer as well.

But are there times when it can replace it?

There the answer is absolutely yes.

I mean, as I've mentioned in the past,

whenever I travel, I was traveling last weekend,

I almost never take a computer,

I just take my iPad with me.

Because the thing is, the iPad

Right.

can get just about all of it done,

And all from the iPad, on the iPad.

and it's so much easier to travel with.

It's so small and light.

So, I mean, I was giving presentations last week.

I was, you know, editing documents.

I was annotating PDF files and it all worked just great.

Exactly, just all from the iPad, using the Apple pencil

Wow.

Yeah.

and everything worked great.

One of the things where the iPad works really well

when you just have one thing at a time going on,

but when it comes to multitasking,

sometimes especially, you know, you can,

you feel like you don't have the power

Right, right.

you have with the computer.

And this is something that Apple is trying to address.

Right?

Yeah.

And so, as this article points out,

with the improvements to stage manager,

You have more flexibility on where you put overlapping windows.

And as I've mentioned in past weeks,

this is going to come out this fall with iPadOS 17.

I'm looking forward to it because I had high hopes for Stage Manager a year ago.

Yeah.

And then in reality, I didn't use it because I found it too constraining.

But my hope is that with this new version, I'm going to use it more.

Right.

And then I think it just allows you to, you know, be in and out of more apps at one time,

Right.

as opposed to having every app take the entire full screen at once.

And one more thing I'll mention that he points out in here

Yes.

is external webcam support.

That's been one of those things

that's been a problem for me because when I'm traveling,

Yeah.

Right?

sometimes you need to just, especially in post COVID,

sometimes you need to just jump on a video conference.

And the iPad is nice because it's a great big screen.

Mm-hmm.

You can see everybody else on your video podcast,

Right, you're kind of moving.

but it falls flat for how you look

because the camera is to the side and to the left.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

And so like, if you're looking here at the people

You're kind of moving. Uh-huh

Yeah

and then you need to look over here

to look at the camera and it's always very awkward.

So being able to like, you know,

pop a little portable camera and just throw it in my bag

and then just stick it on top of my iPad,

Yeah

much like I might do with a laptop computer

to get something better than the built-in camera,

I can't wait for that.

And you know, the better solution would be for Apple

to put the webcam, put the camera on the iPad

in a different location along the long side

as opposed to the short side.

(silence)

But I know that they have the electronics in there

Right, right.

that make the Apple Pencil work right above it and stuff.

So maybe there's not a lot of space, but anyway, just examples like that.

I want two cameras.

Yeah, there you go to cameras.

I want two cameras, put multiple cameras.

That's a good solution, too.

(laughs)

Yeah. So so anyway, there's just some of the examples. Mm hmm.

Yeah, this was good.

And this article that obviously we'll link to,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Fernanda Silva does a great job,

I think even in the video, kind of showing some of this,

and just exactly what you were saying, the stage manager.

I mean, I've started really enjoying stage manager

[BLANK_AUDIO]

and iPadOS 16, and I'm thrilled

that I'm gonna have even more options to customize

like how big or small I want some of the windows to be.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

'Cause sometimes I do run up against that brick wall

and we've talked about this with Federico at MacStories,

you know, that he's really looking forward to this

and that's great.

But yeah, that external webcam support caught my eye too.

Wow, that's a good question, Brett.

And I was even just thinking,

we've talked about that little Belkin MagSafe mount, right?

You know, that we would use on maybe a laptop

or something like that.

Could you do that with your iPhone camera?

maybe with the iPad?

I don't know.

Would the iPhone be too heavy to be on top of an iPad?

I don't know.

I'd have to try that out.

(laughing)

But that's a perfect example of the sort of things.

That was where my mind was going, right.

That is an excellent question. I look forward to trying that out. Good idea. Good idea.

Well, okay, so iOS 17 is gonna be new,

[silence]

but how about something old technology in there as well?

NFC, which I believe stands for Near Field Communications.

And the old part here is that Apple has included

a near field communication chip, an NFC chip

in their iPhones since the iPhone six,

which I don't even know how many years that is

[LAUGHTER]

now, the way that that was released, Jeff.

But this was a great story you'll link to from Dan Moore

at, in his further article at Macworld,

where the iOS 17 is finally tapping into the iPhone sixes

full potential, a little tongue in cheek headline there.

But just the fact that we are seeing some of this now

with the NFC chip and I'm pretty excited about this.

Yeah. I mean, he's got a good point that the NFC chip's been there for a long time,

Right.

And yet there hasn't been very much you could do with it. If you ever encountered an NFC tag,

Yeah.

there are ways often with external apps, not with built-in apps, that you could get it to trigger

functions. I mean, I remember years ago, I tried that you can purchase these little cheap

stickers and you could put the sticker on something. And so I might put the sticker

Right.

right here on like my coffee mug. And if I put my phone next to that sticker,

I could use a third-party app or nowadays you could actually use shortcuts to have that launch

Mm hmm.

something happened and it was a little gimmicky. It's like, oh, that's interesting. Ultimately,

I found it wasn't something I was using a lot. But the idea of being able to send information

so quickly and so seamlessly between two devices when they're close to each other

just makes so much sense. And so as Dan points out, the two things that are coming out this fall

Yeah.

is first of all, you have the name drop that if you just put two iPhones together, it will instantly

let you share contact cards, the digital version of giving somebody your business cards. And then

Right.

Right, right.

And then the other one, we've talked about this too,

is the vastly improved AirDrop,

which AirDrop is really a great way,

perhaps the best way to get a file from me to you.

I mean, it's more convenient than a text message

and an email, you don't have to worry

about attachment size and stuff.

But with the new improvements to AirDrop,

NFC starts the transfer,

so your devices are pretty close to each other

and you have to approve it,

but then you could walk away and you could go your way,

I could go my way, you can go get on a plane,

try some, go somewhere else.

Right, right.

And it will just continue the transfer using internet

until it's done, however long that takes,

however large the file is.

And those are, I think, really, really useful features.

So it's funny that it's taken Apple so long

to come up with one, let alone two,

really good NFC features,

but I guess it's better late than never, right?

I'm glad we have 'em.

[PAUSE]

It's one of these technologies that, again, I've known they've been around.

Like I remember they are announcing it in the iPhone 6, but it was just so far down

and way outside of my peripheral vision.

Like I just never encountered it.

But now that you mentioned it, I was just in New York this week, this past week, and

I went to a restaurant.

And you know, sometimes how the restaurants have those little stickers on the table now,

Mm-hmm.

Jeff, where it has a QR code.

Right.

But at the top of this one, it had a QR code, but it also said, or just tap your phone here.

Yeah.

You know what?

I'm going to go back to my question.

I'm going to go back to my question.

I'm going to go back to my question.

I'm going to go back to my question.

I'm going to go back to my question.

And I'm like, okay, well, that's interesting.

I'm going to go back to my question.

I'm going to go back to my question.

Sure enough, it worked.

I'm going to go back to my question.

I just tapped my phone on top of that.

I'm going to go back to my question.

I'm going to go back to my question.

I did not scan the QR code,

I'm going to go back to my question.

but it literally launched the menu

I'm going to go back to my question.

I'm going to go back to my question.

that I could order from there.

I'm going to go back to my question.

I'm going to go back to my question.

And I would just sit in there.

I'm going to go back to my question.

I didn't even think about it much.

I'm going to go back to my question.

Number one, I'm like, it didn't say NFC anywhere on there.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And I didn't even know how it worked at the time.

I'm like, well, that's pretty cool.

I have no idea how that just launched,

which kind of scared me just a little bit.

You know what?

But that is an area where it actually worked.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And if I, you know,

if we could get a little closer to that, maybe,

that makes me excited.

(silence)

You know what they may have been using?

I'm forgetting the particular name of it.

I don't think it's web app, but Apple came up with this technology a few years ago

that you can, triggering through something like NFC,

Right?

have something load. It's not a full app that you would download from the app store. It's a little

(silence)

Oh, okay.

miniature version of the app, certainly sophisticated enough to, for example, have a menu on it,

(silence)

or even let you order things quickly. And there's, I'm forgetting the name of the technology.

Right.

(silence)

You could be right, because it didn't open into the browser.

Cause it's, it's yeah. Yeah. That may have been what it was, but I haven't seen it a lot. You

or it was like a little sandboxed kind of an area that I was in.

Yes, right, right, right, right.

know, I get the sense that Apple wanted to get NFC on iPhones because of course it's the backbone

for Apple Pay, which is fantastic and I use all the time.

But you sort of get the sense that once they have Apple Pay settled, and Apple Pay is great,

I'll tell you one other place that okay, so maybe the restaurant maybe that have been

don't get me wrong, but they just never really looked for other ways to take advantage of

NFC until now.

So it's great because I think there's lots of cool things that you can do with it.

You just need to be creative and it's great to see this.

more.

NFC or not.

I'm not really sure, but I will tell you the one place that I have actually seen bonafide

NFC.

We got our new Subaru Outback, Jeff.

And I'm playing, it's got a very beautiful, huge screen,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

kind of like a vertical screen, right?

So we can connect to CarPlay via Bluetooth, right?

So you have to go into the menu and you have to set that.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Well, on the side of this screen, Jeff,

there was a little odd looking logo.

It looked like an N, it was like two arrows.

Huh.

And it almost to me looked like a Nespresso logo.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And I'm thinking, okay, well, the Subaru,

I don't think can make me coffee.

That'd be great if I can make him an espresso.

[LAUGH]

So honestly, Jeff, I had to look it up

[BLANK_AUDIO]

and you know what that was?

That is the logo for NFC.

Wow, I'm not even sure I would recognize that, yeah.

And the reason that it's in the car,

I didn't, that's what I'm saying.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Like I knew the only reason that I knew

that that was a bona fide instance of it

is because I had to look it up.

Like what is the in symbol on my Subaru Outback?

I Googled it and sure enough, it's NFC.

So here's what it's used for, Jeff.

You can connect, you know, go through the menu

and connect in through Bluetooth on your iPhone

or you just simply tap your phone right there

where that little NFC chip is located

and then it connects for you automatically.

In other words, it was like a shortcut, you know,

to doing a connection on a Bluetooth.

So anyway, I just wanted to say like, again,

Hmm.

Yeah, I just did a Google search and I see the icon that you're talking about.

it was so far out of like,

I didn't even have a clue what that little logo was,

but I was glad that I was able to find it.

And, you know, things like that,

if we can see a little bit more implementation on,

and obviously it's not just Apple,

but it's all of the other manufacturers, right?

To put in these chips, that can be important on there.

Right?

Right.

If I have ever seen that before in my life, I've completely forgotten.

(laughing)

I had, I had no idea what that was.

So thank you.

That's what I'm saying.

Okay, well, NFC, but I'm glad that you linked to that today.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Well, here's another app that I gotta tell you,

I started using almost every day,

the Notes app on my phone.

We've talked about this many, many, many times.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I use the Notes app as just a place

to capture a thought or a quick list of any kind,

or even things that I might wanna share

between my iPhone and my iPad,

I found like almost 14 or 15, it seems like it.

a research or a copy of some texts, that kind of a thing.

This is a great list from Lance Whitney at PC Magazine,

"15 Things You Didn't Realize Apple's Notes App Could Do."

I found, I think, two in here

that I didn't really remember as well.

(laughing)

The thing is, we were excited in the last couple of weeks

(laughs)

about some of the improvements to Notes

Yeah, yeah, same.

that are coming out this fall,

like the ability to link from one note to another

and all the PDF things.

But the reality is Notes is an app that I use all the time,

but I feel like I don't keep up with the new features

Mm-hmm.

because as I was looking through here

about some of the things, I mean, just for example,

you can organize your notes into folders.

And I do it a little bit, but after reading this article

and realizing that you can have folders and subfolders

and stuff like that, I have to admit,

(laughing)

I just have one big ugly list and I don't really organize it that well.

Yeah, right, right.

And the reality is, I know that I can always search for things at the top,

but I'll be honest with you, it's not always perfect to search for notes.

If I took the time, you know, maybe one of these days when I'm like, you know,

Right. (laughing)

on an airplane and have some downtime or something like that,

I should organize my notes in my folders because I think I could be more efficient.

Good organism, yeah.

And another feature that he points out in here, which is not brand new,

but it is the idea that you can use hashtags in notes.

And I've known that this is a feature.

- That's right, that's right.

I just barely, I gotta tell you,

Do you use this right now, Brett, in your notes?

And it works great.

I don't use it a whole lot, but a couple of times,

I'll figure out if I copy something from an email

in the title of the note, I would put hashtag email

and sure enough, it would do exactly what you're describing.

Right?

So I mean, to do it, you put the hashtag first,

the little pound symbol, and then you type a word.

And then here's something that I didn't understand,

(silence)

even from the directions that were in the article you're

[Pause for group work]

talking about.

When you type the word, like for example,

Let's say I put hashtag and then I put Apple, okay?

That's not enough.

You need to do one last step,

which is after you type the word Apple,

you know how right above the keyboard

where you have your word suggestions,

Uh huh.

it will have, you know, I think you said Apple,

Oh, okay.

but maybe you meant this,

or maybe if you put something

that's a misspelling of a word,

like maybe if you use the stock symbol A-A-P-L,

Yeah.

it won't be a real word,

so it'll be on the left side to tell you,

Yeah.

like, do you actually wanna type it this way?

Uh-huh.

But you need to tap one of those things

Exactly.

just above the keyboard

Oh, okay.

right after you type the pound sign.

And when you do it in your note, you will actually see whatever you did, like, you know,

Yeah, yeah.

hashtag AAPL or Apple, but it'll be orange, I think it is, or whatever your highlight color is.

Uh-huh, exactly.

And then you know that it is an actual tag.

And so you can go into a bunch of your other notes and put the actual tags in there too.

And once you've done it for like a group of notes, it's sort of like all of the advantages

of having a folder without actually physically moving them into a folder.

Because when you're at the top level of notes, one of the things that you can see as a way

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

to sort them by is by hashtags.

And it'll suggest some popular hashtags,

and then another selection is to everything that has a hashtag.

But it can be a quick way to find specifically

what you're looking for just because you took the time

to put a hashtag in it way back when.

And so I mean, those are two examples of--

are these brand new?

Absolutely not.

But I know for a fact that I am not taking

full advantage of them, even though as I sit here

Yeah.

and think about it, I'm like, this would actually

I find that I have this balance between,

be useful for me.

So it's a great reminder that Notes

is a very powerful app.

You just need to remember stuff,

all the different things you can do.

That's a fair point.

I want notes to do more,

but I like the simplicity of it right now.

Like he talks about, he talks about change text formatting

[ Silence ]

and I like this, right?

I love making things bold and some highlighted and underline

and most of the basics are there and that's great,

but sometimes I'm like, oh no, I wanna change

like the shape of my bullet list, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And it's like, wait a minute, no, no, no.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

If I wanna do that, maybe I'll go into Word, right?

Like notes isn't the place to do that, that kind of a thing.

But yeah, I mean, I use this all the time

even from just scanning things.

Like I've got one note in here that is, you know,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

all of my different coffees that I've tried, you know?

And I take pictures of the coffee bag, that kind of a thing

and, you know, just make a little note on there.

I mean, it's just a great place to capture that.

[silence]

We've talked about the drafts app before.

And in some cases I keep thinking to myself,

maybe I should be using that instead,

but the notes is just so easy and it synchronizes so well.

I mean, the drafts app is fantastic.

I love that app.

And sometimes I'll go in and I'll save things in there.

But I even use the notes app just quickly

to let you know, Jeff,

that if I wanna reply to somebody on a text message,

but I don't have the time to finish it,

or I wanna dictate it,

but then I wanna go back and fix it and correct it,

I'll do that in the notes app first,

Yep.

and then copy and paste over into text message,

No.

or an email or something like that.

And I know people are thinking,

"Well, that's a lot of work."

But for me, that just means I don't inadvertently

No, I literally was using that trick yesterday

like hit send before I'm ready,

that kind of a thing on some of this.

So good list.

Okay, good. (laughs)

when I was putting together-- normally, my text message

I'm not the only one.

is not that long.

Right, right.

But I wanted to put some details in there.

And like you, I was afraid I was going

to hit Send before it was ready.

And so I just wanted to compose it somewhere else,

Yes.

get it like I wanted it.

And then I knew when it was ready to send it,

you could send it.

One nice thing, you mentioned the fact

that you can put attachments and it's really powerful

that you can like embed images and stuff like that

Yes, yes.

Right.

with the notes.

One of the things that this article pointed out

that I didn't even realize you could do

is that when you get to the main screen of notes

at the very top right,

there's a circle with the three dots in it.

And if you tap that, you get a bunch of menus

of things like new ways to sort your notes

Yes, right.

and everything else.

But one of them is to just view attachments.

So if there is like an image or a file

Mm-hmm.

that you know you attached it to a note

and right now you just can't remember

what particular note that was,

like what did you call it?

That's fine. You can just say view attachments,

[silence]

you'll see all your attachments and you'll say,

"Oh, that's the one I'm looking for."

You can go there and then go specifically to the note.

It's just another way to get at your information.

Just really powerful stuff.

The notes team at Apple is just hitting it out of the park.

They're doing a great job.

Agreed. I am glad to know that you're doing better after your recent surgery.

Thank you.

Nothing major, it sounds like, but it's the Achilles heel on that.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

But your Apple Watch, I don't think, has been very happy with you, Jeff,

(laughs)

And that you haven't been up, standing up

and walking around as much.

This was a great piece that you talked about here.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And I'm glad that Dan Morin also agrees with you.

Like, you know what, Apple Watch?

There might be some times that I can't get up

and walk around and you just need to calm down a little bit.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Don't tell me I gotta get up and walk around.

We'll see how this goes.

I mean, I can see both sides of it.

It's simple, you know, the Apple Watch,

Everyone gets encouragement in different ways.

they're talking about the fact

that they want 100% streak, right?

And if you don't do it, they're going to encourage you to get up and keep moving.

But on the other hand, there's some times that people just can't do that all the time.

Mm-hmm.

I know people that say that the reason that they use a personal trainer when they

is because that, you know, having that other person there is, you know, it makes them feel accountable and it pushes them to do more than perhaps they whether, you know, everybody has to find their way of doing it.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And I found that when I was trying to complete my circles every day, just to keep the silly streak alike of you know it's been this many days that you've made all your green circles today, you know, there was definitely those days when I wasn't necessarily going to do going to, you know, jump on the treadmill or whatever else.

[LAUGH] Right, yep.

[LAUGH]

Right.

But I was like, you know what?

Yeah.

I have this super long streak.

That's right.

Right.

Let me just do it and get it over with.

Right.

Yeah.

And for me, I mean, I know it's just gamification

Yeah.

That's right.

and stuff like that, but I found it to be encouraging.

(laughing)

On the other hand, sometimes it's like the end of the day,

it's a Friday night, you know, I'm going out with friends.

It's like, there's no way in the world

I am gonna do my 30 minutes today,

but, or maybe even just the last 15 minutes,

whatever I need to close the circle.

But like, I hate to destroy the streak

because on Saturday and Sunday and on Monday and Tuesday,

Right.

having that long streak is what's going to encourage me

to be active.

And so, you know, you should totally have the ability to give yourself a pass.

[silence]

And I understand the logic of someone else saying, oh, well,

if you give yourself a pass for the day, it's not a real streak.

[laughs]

Right, right.

To which my response is, who cares?

Yeah, right.

It doesn't I mean, no one else in the world needs to know

[laughs]

whether I'm having a streak or not.

Right.

[laughs]

But you're actually one of the few people that I actually share my activity goals

Right. Same with you, yeah.

with. So like you and like one or two other people would even know

[laughs]

whether or not I have a streak. We don't have a streak.

But it's like what it's it's just you're just playing games

with yourself and your own brain.

Right, right.

So if you decide that for you, a streak means five days a week,

Right, right, right.

not seven days a week, if that's going to be enough

to encourage you to be more active, go for it.

You know, why does it matter if your definition of a streak

Right.

is different from someone else's definition?

So I really think, I'm surprised, to me,

I know. Yeah. Yeah.

this is so obvious that I don't understand

that Apple Watch has been around so long.

I don't understand why Apple hasn't done it.

And I will tell you, I mean, what I would do

to try to work around it is if I knew that there was a day I just wasn't going to work out,

Right?

Right, right.

I would just go into my Apple watch and just start. There's some generic workouts that are

just called like open goal. There's no particular thing. And I would just start it and I just let

And just let it go.

it run. And it runs for my 22 minutes, enough for me to get the full 30 minutes that I need.

Right, right.

And then I just turn it off and it's silly. It's ridiculous that you need to even do that

But you got your ring.

sort of thing. But that would mean that my 400 day streak would be 401, which is going to give

Right.

give me the incentive on days 402, 403, 404, 405, 406.

I feel like I don't know if this is even possible today, but I remember back in the day when

So Apple needs to rethink this, absolutely.

Oh, 10 minutes before the hour

this first started coming out, people would be just sitting on the couch and they would

just like shake their hand back and forth, right?

While they're watching, like they would just shake their hand.

when you wanna get the stand hour, absolutely, yeah.

You got to get that.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Uh, you know, the reason that I was looking at that, one of the reasons I looked at the

story. My wife has said for several, a couple of years now, we just got her an actual brand

new Apple Watch. I'm going to talk about that in just a second. But she feels the same way,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

at least in the sense that like on Sundays, right? Typically on Sundays, we rest a little

bit more, like we don't go out and do a whole lot and we certainly don't go out and exercise.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

But the Apple Watch is still encouraging you to get out there and work. And usually towards

the end of the day, Jeff, it comes up with a message like that, "Hey, you can still do

Bye bye.

Like you can still walk for 20 minutes and get that ring.

And my wife has always said,

there should be a Sabbath setting on the watch.

So like you could just tell the watch,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

hey, you know what, today I'm just gonna take it easy.

And the watch should be able to be compliant

and be like, okay, you're all right.

You're not gonna get your rings,

but okay, we'll let you be.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Anyway, I just hadn't thought about it

in the comprehensive sense that you linked

to the story here, Jeff.

So thanks for doing that.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And yeah, we'll see what Apple's gonna do on that

because I think in the interest of like wellbeing

and self-awareness, that kind of thing

that they're always kind of harping on there.

I think that's pretty important.

You gotta know when it's time to take a break

[BLANK_AUDIO]

on there sometimes.

All right, we talked about some of the tips

with the Notes app that may be a little bit hidden.

You didn't really know about.

This is a neat article you linked to,

Yeah.

"Seven Things Hiding in Your Phone's App Icons

You Probably Haven't Noticed Yet."

I think, what did he have?

Seven things?

I probably knew about two of these seven things,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

and the others, my jaw dropped on the table, Jeff.

Thanks for linking to this today.

This is fun. I mean, the one that I think most people know is that if you put the calendar, Apple's built-in calendar app, it will show the today's date.

Yep.

And so that's the reason that I usually keep it in my dock, because it's a convenience way just to glance down and see what day is today, which is really nice.

Right, right, it's right there.

Right, got that one.

(laughing)

But this article collects a bunch of other ones. And let me begin by saying that only Apple apps can change what the icon looks like so dynamically that it can take advantages.

Yeah.

Yes, agreed.

I actually think it would be an interesting idea if Apple opened this up to third-party developers.

Third-party developers can reapply a new icon. So like some apps will offer, you know,

Right.

You can change it, right, right.

10 different icons and you can choose, do you want it to be blue or orange or whatever,

Uh-huh.

Yeah, I got that one too.

but it doesn't do this dynamically changing the background. So he points out, for example,

that the clock app, it actually changes the clock hands throughout the day.

Yes.

The little waveform.

So it shows you the current time. That's one you may have noticed,

Right.

I got that one too.

but one, there's one down here, the last one I had, I had never seen this one before

Yes.

that there's an app called Voice Memos, which you can use to just record a voice recording.

The little waveform, right.

And, you know, the icon has like the up and down lines of what it would look like for a waveform.

Incredible.

And what this person figured out, or he read from before, is that if you say the word "apple,"

[BLANK_AUDIO]

the waveform of the word "apple" matches what is on the icon. And I'm like, that's pretty clever.

[LAUGH] That's brilliant.

I, you know, whoever thought about it, that's like one of those Easter eggs that you would never know

Absolutely brilliant.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

about. And then once you see it, you probably can't unsee it. So, so anyway, there's some other fun

ones in here, but it would, it would be cool if there were even more things that, you know,

That was great.

[silence]

you could have more interactive apps, whether it be from first party apps from Apple or from third

parties, but it's cute that people took the time to do it. One of the things that people have often

talked about is the maps app shows you historically, it used to show you the location of the

Yes.

[silence]

original Apple campus which is at infinite one you know number one infinite loop in Cupertino

Right, right.

and then they recently changed it to the um that where the the current the what we all call the

[silence]

The spaceship, yeah.

- Yeah, right.

spaceship the Apple Park campus is located but that's the sort of thing that most people would

My favorite, the flashlight icon.

never even pay attention to what was shown in that uh in that maps icon so it's cute little

easter egg things

You know, this is the one that's on your lock screen.

[PAUSE]

And so many people use this all the time.

I use it constantly.

So when you tap it,

you know it's usually like a black background.

And when you tap it and you know,

you should hold and tap to turn it on,

the background turns white.

What I did not know is that the little tiny switch

on the little icon of the flashlight changes as well.

Like it toggles on.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I did not know this.

I thought, anyway, that blew my mind this morning.

I'm like, what?

Like that's so silly and so unnecessary.

Nobody should have had to required to be do that,

I have a different way of telling when my flashlight is on my iPhone.

but it's just sort of neat thing.

And I use that flashlight icon all the time.

And that was one of my favorites on there.

I like it.

(Jeff laughs)

Yes.

It's when my wife or my kids say, hey, Jeff, your iPhone's in your pocket and

Dad.

You're exactly.

there's a light coming out of your pocket.

pocket and I was like, Oh yeah, okay, because I use it or turn I mean I use it all the time,

Right.

but sometimes I forget it's on or I think I turned it off and I didn't turn it off and

Right.

next thing that you know my pants pockets got like a light coming out of it and

there you go, there you go.

You're just a shining personality, Jeff.

That's all.

Let's do some home kit.

Yeah, he talks about HomeKit stuff all the time, yeah.

We haven't talked about some of the home automation

in a while, so I've missed it.

And I'm glad you linked to HomeKit Weekly.

This is, you've linked to Bradley Chambers

at nine to five max several other times.

And I like it.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Apparently it's a, now it's a feature, HomeKit Weekly.

So this was, I gotta be honest,

I did not know the Wiz light bulbs were a thing,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

but I am telling you,

I might be purchasing them in the next week or so.

I haven't invested a whole lot in the HomeKit,

the home automation thing.

I've got maybe a couple of light bulbs,

Yeah, and this is the key.

but this one I'm really interested in the WIZ,

W-I-Z, WIZ light bulbs, gaining matter support now,

not just home kit, but also matter support.

And he says, Bradley says, it's a huge win for Apple.

Yeah.

I've seen this brand of light bulbs and accessories for a while.

And they look to be powerful and lower cost,

Right, right.

but they've never been compatible with HomeKit.

And I don't know if that's because of the licensing fees

that Apple charges for that or what,

but now that we have the open standard of Matter,

Right.

more and more of these devices,

Wow, right.

even the less expensive ones are supporting Matter.

And since Apple supports Matter too, you can do it.

It's dimmable.

And I mean, as you're the, for folks watching in the video,

I mean, there's a couple of different

interesting bulbs they have.

Yeah.

They have just a bulb that just goes on and off.

They've got a bulb that, you know,

It's dimmable.

you can change the intensity of it.

They've got one that can change color.

They've got the one, I'm forgetting the name of it.

Yeah.

It's the first one you have on your screen right now.

It's a special type of bulb.

We have some in our house too.

Yeah, right.

It's sort of an old timey bulb

where you can see the filaments.

In this case, it's fake filaments.

There's a name for those that I'm forgetting

as I'm sitting here.

But they have some interesting offerings.

Right.

And so if they work with Matter

and if your devices can support Matter as Apple now does,

Right.

you just have a lot more flexibility, which is really nice.

I will tell you though, just as a,

maybe not a warning, but just something to keep in mind.

If you're going to buy a light bulb that is controllable,

just keep in mind that light bulbs,

LED light bulbs have a relatively long light pattern,

light span, but eventually they'll go out

Yeah, right.

and you have to replace it and that's one downside.

And then another downside,

and this is perhaps the bigger one,

is that in order to take advantage of it,

you need to keep the light switch always in the on position,

which means that you'll forever control that light bulb

just using your app.

And if you're the only one in your house, that's fine,

I've run into that.

But if you have other people in your house,

unless they're using the app,

Yeah.

they may find it annoying

that they can't use the light switch.

Uh-huh.

And if they do use the light switch and turn off the bulb,

Uh-huh. Don't work. Yes, right. Right.

then you can't control it.

And so, and I've mentioned this before,

I mean, the number one solution that I recommend for this

is for HomeKit lights is to use the Lutron lights,

Lutron Caseta specifically,

because the Lutron lights,

instead of changing it at the bulb level,

you're changing it at the switch level.

And it's a normal wall switch

that anybody doesn't have to,

they don't have to know diddly squat about technology.

They can just press the buttons on the wall

to make the light come on and off.

So they don't need to have a special app,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

but then if you do have the app

or if you have HomeKit stuff, you can control the lights.

Now, having said that,

that's just for turning lights on and off and dimming.

That's not gonna help you if you wanna have a light

Yes, agreed.

that changes color, you know,

and which is a sort of a cool thing to have,

to have the light change color.

So if you do wanna have that,

then you'll just have to keep the light

and the on switch all the time.

So, but you know, big story here is,

I want to see more of this.

I want to see more and more third parties, more variety.

- Indeed.

One quick story on Vision Pro, I promise just one,

And that because there's now an open standard of matter,

we can do more on our Apple devices,

even if it doesn't technically support HomeKit.

(laughs)

'cause we'll be talking about this a lot more

from Ben Lovejoy, which honestly,

this story just convinced me completely, Jeff,

that I don't wanna use any other devices

Oh my goodness

that I can't see through,

'cause he links to a little video in here

of fails that a lot of people have gone,

Yeah

if they have other visors or other, you know,

components that they've been using here

that you can't see through,

and it doesn't work out very well

for these folks a lot of times.

And anyway, the story really goes into,

[no audio]

you can explain a little bit more

about how the Vision Pro is addressing this,

because while you can't see through the Vision Pro,

the headset that is, that Apple has really done a good job,

it sounds like, of using the cameras on the outside

to make sure that you feel like you're in the physical room

so that you just don't run into a wall

or kick your television when you're trying to box

with the bad guys or something.

Yeah, there are so many examples on YouTube, and as you mentioned, some of them are collected

(laughing)

collected in this compilation video of somebody that has, whether it's an Oculus Quest or

(laughing)

(laughing)

whether it's got the PlayStation, but because this headset's on them and they're completely

immersed in a virtual world where they think they are boxing or climbing up mountains or

Right.

whatever they're doing, you just lose track of where you are in the outside world.

Right, right.

Next thing you know, you've put your finger, you put your fist through the television set

and cracked your TV or you've gone through the sliding glass, horrible, horrible situations.

(laughing)

(laughing)

And so the way that Apple is addressing this is they sort of have three modes for the Appalachian

Right.

Pro.

One mode is the one where the cameras are being used so that you actually see the outside

world being reproduced.

So if there's a coffee table or a wall, you see the coffee table on the wall in the headset

(laughing)

exactly where it is.

[silence]

You just happen to see a window, you know, next to it or inside of it that you can work

around.

So that's sort of the full augmented reality mode.

And then there's sort of a middle row, a middle ground where you see a little bit of the world

around you and a little bit, not so much.

And Apple makes it so that you see enough

of the world around you to keep safe.

If a person gets close to you,

they will suddenly appear within your screen.

Mm-hmm. Right.

Yes, right.

They just sort of show up in there

so that you don't not see them.

And then, but the point of this story is that

Apple does have a complete VR mode

so that everywhere you look around you,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

you're transported to another world

or another environment or whatever it is.

And that's the mode that the other headsets

currently mimic typically,

where you really can't see the fact

Okay, right, right.

that there is a couch in front of you

or that there's a person to your left.

And so what Apple has said is that when you're in that mode,

you're limited to moving five feet in each direction.

So think of it as like a 10 by 10 square.

So the mode is really designed for

[BLANK_AUDIO]

if you're just sort of staying still,

maybe sitting on a couch looking around you.

But if you start moving around too much,

Right.

you don't have to go very far

Yeah, right.

before Apple just switches from the full VR mode

over to the AR mode so that you can see the world around you

and try to make sure that you don't get yourself

trouble. This is a perfect example of how Apple has such a history of not being the first to the

market. They didn't create the first iPhone. They didn't create the first this and that,

Mm-hmm.

the first tablet. But they took a look at what was out in the market already. The first MP3 player,

when they came up with the iPod, they took a look at what was out there. They figured out what

Right.

Right.

worked, what didn't work. I remember when the first iPod came out, existing MP3 players held

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

very, very few songs and they were big.

And so they said, those are the problems we need to solve for.

Right.

We need something that can be small to fit in your pocket,

but we need to hold lots of songs.

And the innovation there was being the first device

to use a super, super small hard drive.

And so likewise, with the Vision Pro,

Yeah.

Right, right.

I could be mistaken, but I thought I saw, I don't think that you linked to anything

Apple's saying the same thing.

We can see the problems with the existing products,

even though those existing products are

very different from ours.

Let's try to plan for them in the future.

So that's smart.

Because Apple doesn't want to have a bunch of YouTube

videos of people wearing the Apple Vision Pro,

you know, walking into objects and knocking over lamps

and everything else.

Absolutely.

about this, but the Vision OS, the operating system for the Vision Pro, I think was released

to a select number of developers this past week, Jeff. And so, you know, that for me,

Yeah.

number one, somebody I think was saying, well, that usually means at that point that the

hardware is pretty well gelled, right? In other words, Apple is pretty confident in

the hardware. And now they're releasing the Vision OS, which right now, obviously people

can't use on the Vision OS. I think it's like an iPad simulator or something like that,

right, that they can use it on.

But just to get this into the hands of developers

[BLANK_AUDIO]

so they can start playing around

with at least the constructs of it.

So by the time that we do finally see

that somebody can, you know,

shell out $3,500 for the Vision Pro,

then there's already theoretically gonna be some apps

or some functionality, right,

that people can take advantage of.

So just the fact that it was that quick

that people were able to get Vision OS,

or at least, you know, the basics of it

is kind of encouraging to me.

And I was just glad to hear that today.

I completely agree. I mean, this product is going to come out,

Right.

they say early next year,

which I could mean as late as what May,

probably would still count as early.

They've got between January and May of next year,

Right, right.

they have lots of time and developers can start now.

You're not wearing the actual goggles yet,

you're just looking at a simulation on the screen,

but you can start to try out some of

your apps and see how it works.

Apple has already announced that they're having

select locations around the world that

you will be able as a developer to go to places,

not just Cupertino, but also like London and Tokyo,

Right, right.

and actually try out the real hardware, see how your app runs with it.

You know, I'm sure some folks once they actually try something for real, like, oh,

I never realized when I was doing the simulation, just looking at it on my monitor that this is how

this works. Now I can go back and tweak it. But yeah, I think Apple's hoping that there's going

to be some good, solid third-party app alternative apps available for when the device comes out next

Where are you at?

Time for our "Where Ya At?"

segment.

This is a good one yet again.

this was in California. I'm not sure if it was Southern California. Okay, good. Los Angeles

Los Angeles area, yeah.

[ Silence ]

area. So a hiker was going along the trail. Apparently some part of the trail fell out

from under her. She fell, broke her leg, did not have cell phone coverage, but she did

have the iPhone 14. And I love the quote in here. I didn't even know how it worked, but

And I was able to connect with law enforcement,

(silence)

with emergency personnel through the SOS feature.

And I think that's just a testimony

to how nice the feature was actually baked in

to the iPhone 14 and how important

this is gonna continue to be.

This won't be the last story by any stretch.

Yeah, I get the sense that she may have been by herself, which would be really dangerous if you break your foot and you're by yourself.

Yeah.

(laughing)

I mean, there's nobody there to help you.

she was able to call the help.

Right, lifting her out.

And there's even a video here where you can actually see

they picked her up with a helicopter,

like, you know, that long string that sort of lifts her up

Right.

to the helicopter to get her to safety.

Right, yeah, right.

But there was also a quote in here

where the LA County officials were saying

that this is the, I forget the number,

like the 11th time that they have rescued somebody

using this.

And so, you know, you and I may not be,

(silence)

here we go, that's right there.

I'll find it, yeah.

The iPhone 14, oh, it wasn't there, it was somewhere else.

But anyway, I think they said it was the 11th time.

And just because I'm not using this to be rescued

Yeah.

and you, Brett, I don't think have used it to be rescued,

there are absolutely people out there

Right.

that are taking advantage of this

in what could potentially be dire situations.

And I'm sure that when you're in that situation

and you suddenly realize that this is the difference

between you getting help and you being out in the cold,

that's pretty impressive.

[silence]

My favorite part of the story is apparently one of the first responders wanted to take

a picture of the responders and the lady with her iPhone.

[laughs] I thought that was funny. [laughs]

It's like, is this the new selfie, Jeff?

It's like, hey, you know, I'm injured and half, you know, halfway to death, but let's

[silence]

get a selfie real quick to show that the iPhone saved me.

Hey, you know, if you've got time to do that, you can do that.

That's too funny. [silence]

But it's like, she's even smiling.

The hiker is smiling at this picture, holding her iPhone and saying, hey, yes, I'm safe.

[laughs]

Mm-hmm.

Now she's got her leg bandaged up, thank goodness.

But you know, it just got a funny, it's like,

[laughs]

hey, we need to get a selfie with the first responders.

You know, we'll make sure that we get it targeted.

In the know.

Anyway, that's really good.

All right, so now let's go to in the know.

Couple of tips.

I mentioned that we just recently got my wife, Jeff,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

an Apple Watch 8.

I think she was on a three for a long time

and bless her heart, she was trying to go along with it

[BLANK_AUDIO]

and it was still working okay,

but she's wanting to get a little bit more

into some of the fitness things.

And we used to challenge each other.

We couldn't really do that.

There was something that wasn't messed up

[BLANK_AUDIO]

or I don't think she could upgrade that Apple watch.

Whatever it was, I wanted to encourage her with this.

We got her a brand new watch on there.

Well, one of the things that she wanted to test out

[BLANK_AUDIO]

that I've known about for a long time,

but I've never really focused on too much

is she wanted to track her sleep.

Some nights she was sleeping good,

other nights it wasn't so good,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

but she just wanted something simple to be able to say,

you know, how much REM sleep did I get versus,

you know, deep sleep or the core sleep,

that kind of a thing.

You know, how often did I wake up in the night?

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Now, I have typically not worn my Apple Watch at night,

but she wanted to start doing this.

You know, Apple Watch 8, one of the big things,

obviously it had much better battery so that she could,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

you know, right?

She could wear it overnight and then just, you know,

charge it in the morning,

maybe when she was taking a shower or something,

and that would be enough for the full day.

Well, she got, she was, kept talking about this,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I'm like well, not gonna and I'm gonna try this a little bit more to like I know I've

got this and I've got my Apple Watch Ultra.

Well I gotta tell you I know I set up a sleep focus a long time ago because there's a few

[BLANK_AUDIO]

things you gotta do.

First you gotta have the Apple Watch right and you have to set up the the the sleep mode

[BLANK_AUDIO]

or a sleep goal in the health app on the iPhone.

Now I may not have all of the steps here but I think one of the reasons that I kind of

turned off from it, Jeff is just, there was a lot of steps here, you got to go to the

[BLANK_AUDIO]

health app, you set up your sleep mode or your sleep focus. Well, then you've got to

make sure that your Apple Watch will go into that sleep mode. So you set a sleep schedule

[silence]

on your iPhone. I mean, already, I'm kind of getting overwhelmed with how many steps

here. But theoretically, what happens at the end of the at the end of the day, when you

set your time, like mine's at 10pm at night, my Apple Watch goes into sleep mode, my health

app, you know, my phone is sitting on my bedside table. And while that is going on, then my

watch is literally tracking the different stages of my sleep. Now I'm really really

>> Right.

not paid attention of this. And the health app does go into a little bit of explanation

[BLANK_AUDIO]

and some definitions about the different stages of sleep. Now, all that to say, there are

other apps out there that will probably do a much better job at being very particular

[BLANK_AUDIO]

on what they're tracking in your sleep schedule.

But you know, I don't need that all the time.

Like I just want to get a general idea,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

like how long was I asleep?

You know, did I wake up to have to go to the restroom

in the middle of the night?

And it shows on that.

I gotta tell you, it looks pretty accurate, you know,

just for like a normal person like me,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

that I don't need to do, you know,

I don't need every single, you know, exacting minute.

But I do want to know, I would get about an hour and a half

of like really deep sleep, right?

As opposed to the REM sleep and the core sleep on there.

[silence]

And it's just kind of nice that it'll continue to track it

as it goes through.

The other last thing quickly on this,

if you do set a sleep schedule,

you can say that you want it to sound an alarm

at the end of this sleep cycle.

And I gotta tell you,

there are some specific alarms in there, Jeff,

that are not available in the regular alarm clock.

I didn't know that.

And I really kind of like them.

But.

Yeah, I like them a little bit more.

Good.

As far as I can tell,

they're only available when you set up this sleep schedule.

And they're really nice

[BLANK_AUDIO]

because they start off kind of nice and easy,

and then they get louder and louder and grow a little bit.

Maybe somebody can let me know if there's available

in a different way, but you know,

the regular setting alarm, you can't get access to these,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

they're only available in this sleep schedule.

So, sort of, kind of a big overall tip on there,

just consider tracking your sleep.

If nothing else, just FYI, right?

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Just so that you have a general idea

of how long you were in REM sleep versus deep sleep.

And you can do this, go into your health app on your iPhone,

set up a sleep schedule.

If you've got an Apple Watch that will track this,

[no audio]

that goes into a sleep mode, which is really nice

'cause it's not very bright during the night

when you're moving your arms, that kind of a thing.

It does it to where you have to tap it

to actually get the time on there on your Apple Watch.

And then as you do this over several days,

you can see that the health app will even track this

and tell you how many hours average over the week

that you've got your sleep, that kind of a thing.

So anyway, sleep schedules on the iPhone

and the Apple Watch, my tip for the day.

That's a good one. So my tip of the day, and it's inspired by some posts from Jason Snell

Okay. Right, right.

from earlier this week, is just a reminder of how to organize your home screens on your

iPhone or your iPad. I suspect that everybody knows that if you hold a finger down on an

icon it gets into that jiggy mode and you can drag a specific icon around. And that's

good, but there's a lot more that you can do that folks may not know about. First of

Come on.

all, I'll tell you just to build upon what I just mentioned, if you're in that, if you're

Uh huh.

in the icons in the jiggy mode and you start to move one icon around, you don't have to limit

yourself to moving one icon at a time. While you have one icon selected with one hand, you can tap,

sometimes it's helpful to use your other hand for this, you can tap a second icon, a third icon,

a fourth icon, as many as you want, and they will all sort of bunch up into the group. And so,

instead of moving one icon from one screen to another, you are moving four or five, and that

Right.

Yeah.

just saves you a lot of time moving around. Second of all, when you're moving around,

you know, we all, most people know that if you sort of move your finger to the left edge of the screen

[BLANK_AUDIO]

or to the right edge of the screen and you hover for a second, it will open up the next page and

then you can go to the edge of the screen and hover and then it will open the next page and then edge

Yeah.

of the screen. And if you want to move it a bunch of different screens, it could take a while, but

while you have your one finger with all the icons, whether it's one icon or multiple icons, you can

[BLANK_AUDIO]

actually use your second finger just to swipe between pages very quickly. And so you can, if

To go, okay, okay.

If you wanted to move things over four or five home screens,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

use your second finger to move things over,

and that's great.

So my next tip is, so now you've got them organized.

I mean, the reality of it is, you know,

[Pause]

you probably only have a certain number of apps

that you use regularly.

Do you really want to take the time to organize all 100 apps

that you don't use but once in a blue moon?

Mm-hmm.

And so what I would say is no.

[Pause]

What I would recommend that you do is limit the number

of home screens that you have on your iPhone and your iPad.

And you can do that by on your iPhone or iPad.

If you, once you get sort of into the jiggy mode,

there's at the very bottom of the screen,

there's like a series of dots that you can tap.

Right.

And when you bring that up,

(silence)

it will show you all of the different home screens

Right, right, exactly.

that you have of apps.

And you can select the first two, you probably know well,

because those are probably your most used apps.

But once you get to the third, fourth, fifth, sixth,

seventh, eighth, ninth screen,

those are probably,

you probably never even really go to those screens.

And so what you can do is you can just tap

(laughs)

underneath them to turn them off.

Oh yeah.

they haven't gone away, they're just not being displayed.

And so let's say for example,

you leave your first two home screens there

and then turn off all the rest of them.

Right?

What that means is that when you're on your iPhone

Oh, yeah.

or your iPad, you'll see your first home screen, swipe,

you'll see your second home screen, swipe,

and because you've turned the other ones off,

it will then go to the app library,

which is a very nice area.

It's sort of like the default last screen

where Apple organizes your apps

in a way that Apple thinks makes sense.

Mm-hmm.

They put together games, they put together utilities.

Right, right.

That's neat.

It may not always be the same way that you organize apps,

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

but it doesn't really matter

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

'cause chances are you're not gonna pay

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

terribly much attention to the organization.

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

Just go to the top and just start to type the name

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

of the app, or you could just tap in there

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

and you can list them all by name

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

and you could scroll around

I'm going to go ahead and put that in the chat.

if you can't remember the precise name,

Right, right.

but you can find things in the app library.

But unless it's something that you use a lot,

That's neat.

you probably don't need to actually have it

on a dedicated spot on your home screen.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, those are some tips that I use.

use, figure out how many home screens you really need

and keep them organized.

And if you wanna put folders on there, that's fine too.

But then everything else, just turn off those screens,

rely upon the app library.

One last tip on this.

Now this is getting into something

that's a little advanced and geeky,

Oh, good.

but it's something that I used last week.

And so I'll share it with you.

Okay.

So I was giving a presentation

Right.

to a bunch of other lawyers last week.

And most of my presentation was in keynote,

but I was talking about artificial intelligence,

the next generation of it, like ChatGPT and stuff.

So there were gonna be times during my presentation

when I was going to get out of my keynote presentation

and then go into the Safari web browser

and then actually use the ChatGPT webpage

or some other webpages

Right.

to actually do some live internet searches.

Okay.

So when I went from one to the other,

I would be exiting keynote and going back to my home screen.

And as I've mentioned to you before, Brett,

Yeah, it's widgets. It's all widgets. Right.

my first page of my home screen, it has no icons on it.

It's all like control panel.

It's information for me.

It's got like my to-do list.

It's got like, you know, recent documents that I've used.

It's widgets and it's widgets that I find useful,

which for me is terribly useful.

But if I'm doing a presentation to a hundred other attorneys,

Right.

You can see it all.

I don't necessarily want them to see my to-do list, right?

Right.

So what I did was that trick that I told you before

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

about turning on and off individual screens,

I went in and I turned off all of my screens on my iPad,

Oh.

except for one.

I created one special screen,

When you got out of keynote, OK.

and that was gonna be,

because it was the only one that I had enabled,

it was the one that was gonna be displayed

when I got out of Keynote and I showed it.

OK.

Now, ideally, what I wanted

Right, right.

was that screen to be completely blank,

but you can't have a screen with nothing on it at all.

So instead, what I did is my iPad

OK.

has just a sort of a blue background on it.

It's not a pattern, it's just the color blue.

It's a nice blue.

OK.

And so I took a picture of the blue.

So I mean, imagine having a picture in your photo library

that just has the exact same blue as the background

and then put it in my photo app.

Okay.

Oh.

And then I use the app that you're showing on the screen,

Widget Smith, and I told Widget Smith,

I want to create a special widget

Right?

that shows a specific picture.

And the specific picture I wanna show

(laughing)

is the exact same background, that blue background.

And so when I told Widget Smith

Right?

to put that in the top left corner,

It wasn't a blank screen.

You couldn't tell.

There was one thing on the screen.

Now it happened to be the color blue

on top of the color blue.

So it's invisible, you know, you don't see anything.

Ah, look at you.

But you, and then when I, after I did that, I'm like,

(laughs)

you know what, because I'm giving a presentation,

Uh-huh.

it might be nice to have my law firm logo

as the one thing on the screen.

So what I then did is I made another picture

Brilliant.

of just my law firm logo against that same blue background.

And so I went back and on this one custom screen,

I think on my iPad, there were three spaces at the top.

Right?

So I had three blank ones.

And then the fourth one, which was the next row,

was another blank one.

But then the fifth one, which would be pretty much

in the middle of the screen, that was my logo.

(laughing)

And so the end result is that when I went to my home screen,

Right, right.

all the audience saw was what looked to be

a completely blank blue screen.

They're not seeing any of my widgets,

they're not seeing any of my apps.

And they just saw my law firm logo up there

Bravo, right, right.

as if that was the only thing on my desktop,

which of course was fake because the iPad

won't actually let you do that.

But it was using the same techniques

(laughing)

that I just talked about as a way to sort of fake it

and make it plain.

And so then once my presentation is over,

That's great.

I can go back into all of my screens,

Right?

You can go back to it.

turn off that fake background that's blank,

turn on the other ones that I use,

but I still have that fake background.

Yeah.

So if I give another presentation,

That's brilliant.

I like that.

you know, two months from now, all the work's done.

I like it and I will definitely steal it.

That is fantastic.

That is great.

I just turn that one on, turn the other ones off,

All right, Jeff.

We'll thank you for that.

and I'm ready to go.

I'm going to go ahead and close out the show.

So from complicated, simple to complicated,

I'm going to go ahead and close out the show.

I'm going to go ahead and close out the show.

I'm going to go ahead and close out the show.

there's some little tricks

I'm going to go ahead and close out the show.

for manipulating your home screen.

I'm going to go ahead and close out the show.

I'm going to go ahead and close out the show.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I'm going to go ahead and close out the show.

I'm going to go ahead and close out the show.

I'm going to go ahead and close out the show.

That is fantastic.

(laughing)

That is great.

All right, Jeff.

Well, thank you.

We'll put the hat back on for the end of the presentation here.

Wow, this is good.

We had a lot to talk about today.

Okay, thanks for the,

(laughing)

the birth, the birthday hat.

Yeah.

[LAUGH]

(laughing)

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Well, thanks as always for joining me

and talking about the latest technology and stories.

Jeff, we will talk with you next week.

Thank you.

Happy birthday, Brett.

Have a great one tomorrow and goodbye, everybody.